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Trading and blogging: What I’ve learned so far

This is just a little recap on how things have been

going so far, so it’s going to be kind of short.

Okay, so in a post from a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going to throw myself in to both my trading and my blogging. I just want to give you guys an update on how things have been going and a few things that I’ve learned pertaining to them both.

Trading

This is the one that I’m most fascinated with, mainly because of the process that is being developed. When I first started trading, I focused on the intra-day price movements and did my best to “Day Trade”; that’s just not my style. I have learned that I prefer swing trading and that I don’t hold many of the attributes that can normally be associated with Day traders; I’m just not the “Hunting” type of guy in that respect.

Volume

Also, I’ve been paying real attention to volume and the effects that news has on a company’s share price and have concluded that neither of these things mean very much. I want to put major emphasis on the volume itself; waning volume usually indicates that the price of a security is about to head downwards and, if this is being back up by the price action on the chart, then it is usually true. But, on the tickers that I’ve been trading lately the volume on the chart moves in an extremely erratic manner. One day the volume on the ticker will be almost non-existent but the ticker will still move up substantially. The next, the ticker will have extremely high volume, but move nowhere. I understand that meaning can be found in both things but, I just don’t see the reason to do so.

It’s all irrelevant

This brings me to what I’ve learned about news. It makes sense to look at the news of a ticker, trying to make sense of the stocks potential direction. What doesn’t make sense to me is why anyone places any real trust in doing so. While trading, all that anyone is trying to do is find an edge and they believe that looking in-depth at news and other pieces of information gives it to them; this seems redundant to me. What I see while trading are stocks that all seem to make the same movements both among and within themselves.

What I’m getting at is that we try and give meaning to moves without really having an idea of what is going on (only way that I think that this is possible is if you’re the one who is causing the movement). All that we need to know is whether the odds are higher on the ticker going up or down. I believe that it’s possible to gain an understanding of this by simply looking at the price action (that may just be me though)

Blogging

Blogging has opened my eyes to the world of marketing, and how much of it deals with psychology . When I say this, I’m saying that while popular blogs do provide value to their readers, they are constantly promoting themselves, making sure that they are in their readers’ faces. Basically, in order to blog successfully, one has to make sure that they market themselves in a certain manner.

It’s nowhere near easy

Blogging is not easy, it isn’t the most physically challenging task, but it isn’t easy. From what I’ve noticed so far is that the people who have successful blogs, have been out for a very long time and have been consistent with the level of content that they put out. They have also adapted their processes to fit the needs of their viewers, making sure that they are providing the highest level of value possible.

There’s a lot of bs out there

One more thing is that a lot of these blogs are pure BS. For instance, for all intents and purposes, my blog can be considered a self-improvement blog. Since I understand this, I go and look at other self-improvement blogs, you know either trying to make friends or simply stalking the competition. When I look at these blogs all I see are people smiling talking about ways to improve your happiness among other, simply irrelevant things. While being happy is necessary, I don’t believe that it should be the focus for self-improvement. (people need to learn how to deal with their emotional state, they will not be happy all the time. It’s not natural. We all, being human, go through cycles of both emotional highs and emotional lows. While I may not understand the mechanics of it fully, yet, I do understand that it happens (just look at a stock chart, they are perfect representations of human emotions).

Conclusion

When you focus on something and refuse to accept no as an answer, you learn that it’s inevitable for you to figure it out. While I haven’t figured it all out yet (and probably never will), I’m confident that I’m going to get a grip on both things. When I look at myself and how I behaved a few months ago regarding both trading and blogging, it amazes me to see what how much I’ve grown. I will keep you guys updated on the process and any other bits of information that I pick up.